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Quentin Blake
Career During the 1960s, Blake taught English at the Lycée Français de Londres which cemented his long association with France and culminated in the award of the Legion of Honour (see below). He taught at the Royal College of Art for over twenty years, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. Blake illustrated "The Wonderful Button" by Evan Hunter, published by Abelard-Schuman in 1961.5 Blake gained a reputation as a reliable and humourous illustrator of more than 300 children's books, including some written by Joan Aiken, Elizabeth Bowen, Roald Dahl,Nils-Olof Franzén, William Steig, and Dr. Seuss —the first Seuss book that "Seuss" did not illustrate himself, Great Day for Up! (1974).6 By 2006, Blake had illustrated 323 books, of which he had written 35 and Dahl had written 18.7a To date, Blake has illustrated two of David Walliams' books and has illustrated Folio Society Limited Editions such as Don Quixote, Candide and 50 Fables of LaFontaine. In the 1970s Blake was an occasional presenter of the BBC children's story-telling programme Jackanory, when he would illustrate the stories on a canvas as he was telling them. In 1993 he designed the five British Christmas issue postage stamps featuring episodes from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Quentin Blake is patron of the Blake Society, Downing College's arts and humanities society. He is also a patron of "The Big Draw"8 which aims to get people drawing throughout the United Kingdom, and of The Nightingale Project,9 a charity that puts art into hospitals. Since 2006 he has produced work for several hospitals and mental health centres in the London area, a children's hospital (hopital Armand Trousseau) in Paris, and a maternity hospital in Angers, France.10 These projects are detailed in Blake's 2012 book Quentin Blake: Beyond the Page, which describes how, in his seventies, his work has increasingly appeared outside the pages of books, in public places such as hospitals, theatre foyers, galleries and museums.11 In 2007 he designed a huge mural on fabric, suspended over and thus disguising a ramshackle building immediately opposite an entrance to St Pancras railway station. The rendering of an "imaginary welcoming committee" greets passengers arriving on the Eurostar high-speed railway.12 Blake is also the designer of 'Ben', the 'logo' of the shop chain Ben's Cookies. Blake also designed several illustrations for the story time segments for the Scottish TV series Squeak! Quentin Blake is a supporter of and ambassador for the indigenous rights NGO Survival International. In 2009, he said, "For me, Survival is important for two reasons; one is that I think it’s right that we should give help and support to people who are threatened by the rapacious industrial society we have created; and the other that, more generally, it gives an important signal about how we all ought to be looking after the world. Its message is the most fundamental of any charity I'm connected with."13 Blake is a Trustee of The House of Illustration, a centre in London for exhibitions, educational events and activities related to the art of illustration. He was also the subject of the first exhibition at this venue, entitled Inside Stories, which opened in July 2014. In 2015 he illustrated a newly discovered Beatrix Potter book, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, to be published in 2016.14